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The London chapter and allies rallied this past Saturday calling for provincial funding to local hospitals to be restored. Photo by Len Elliott.

Council of Canadians chapters are working to highlight key issues in the lead-up to the provincial election in Ontario on June 7.

This morning CBC reports, "Polling suggests nearly half of Ontario voters haven't fully made up their minds, and that makes them persuadable over the next month."

This evening party leaders Kathleen Wynne, Doug Ford and Andrea Horwarth will participate in a live televised debate and the writ - which officially starts the election campaign - will be issued on Wednesday May 9.

Yesterday, I attended Hudbay Minerals' Annual General Meeting of shareholders to confront the company about their terrible track record of violence at their present and former mines in Canada, the US, Guatemala, and Peru. Here is a transcript of what I said:

"Let's take a brief look at each of Hudbay’s current and former operations.

At the Rosemont mine in Arizona just two weeks ago the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Hopi Tribe all launched a lawsuit alleging that the mine is going to deprive tribal members of ancestral praying grounds, destroy a critical part of their heritage including burial grounds and stop members from engaging in important cultural practices and religious traditions. And this is just one of several lawsuits launched against this mining project.

The Council of Canadians will be on Parliament Hill on Monday in solidarity with the Labrador Land Protectors and Grand Riverkeeper-Labrador and their opposition to the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric dam.

The Facebook event page for the rally highlights, "On Monday, May 7, the Ontario-Muskrat Solidarity Coalition and Direct Action Muskrat (DAM) will hold a rally on Parliament Hill (traditional, unceded Algonquin territory) and an act of civil resistance (aka civil disobedience) from which individuals trained in nonviolence will nonviolently enter the Parliament building and place the names and faces and words of all those whose lives are at risk at Muskrat Falls on the desks of MPs in the House of Commons. These will be representative of the people from whom the government has failed to seek and obtain free, prior, and informed consent (as required by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)."

A still from the Comox Valley chapter video Link Arms With Us. Video footage by Clayoquot Action and Sea Wolf Adventures.

The provincial government of BC premier John Horgan will soon be making a crucial decision about fish farm tenures.

Global News has reported, "Twenty of B.C.’s 115 fish farms’ tenure expire this June, many of them in First Nations territory, which [biologist and long-time fish farm opponent Alexandra] Morton said presents Premier John Horgan with a big decision."

The British Columbia government reportedly cannot ban open-net fish farms because they are regulated and licensed by the federal government, but it can reject foreshore tenures that allow people to access fish farms from land and/or anchor the structures to land because those tenures are provincially issued.